Episodes
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At 5:30PM eastern time over Mutual Broadcasting on Independence Day, 1944, The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters took to the air. Originally airing from NBC in Chicago in 1933, it featured the just-heard Hal Peary, and the ever-present Willard Waterman.
Tom Mix was created as an advertising vehicle for the Ralston Purina Company. Its format was devised by Charles Claggett, a St. Louis adman and based on the life of a real cowboy, Tom Mix. Born in Pennsylvania in 1880, he became a soldier and champion roper, winning a national title in 1909. Mix began appearing in movies, and much like Buffalo Bill Cody, his legend soon outgrew his actual exploits thanks to natural showmanship. By the time radio got him, he was seldom mentioned in print without a platoon of fantastic adjectives.
Perhaps the most famous actor to play Tom Mix was Russell Thorson, who held the role for the Blue Network in the early 1940s, until it was canceled on March 27th, 1942.
Tom Mix was revived and moved to Mutual beginning June 5th, 1944 in a fifteen minute serial. By then, Mix joined others like Jack Armstrong, Captain Midnight, and even Superman in the war against the axis. The show became known as “radio’s biggest western-detective program.”
Joe “Curley” Bradley played Mix throughout the later run. Bradley was a former Oklahoma cowboy and Hollywood stuntman who had learned to sing around bonfires. As for the real Tom Mix, he had nothing to do with the serial. He died in a car accident near Florence, Arizona on October 12th, 1940.
At 6:15PM it was Hop Harrigan’s turn to sign on, over The Blue Network’s WJZ. It starred Chester Stratton as Hop Harrigan, young aviator known as “America’s ace of the airways,” with Jackson Beck as Tank Tinker. Beck was all over radio.
Hop Harrigan first took to the air on August 31st, 1942, running on The Blue Network and later ABC until August 2nd, 1946. It was revived from October 2nd, 1946 through February 6th, 1948 over Mutual Broadcasting.
Hop went on missions in dangerous territory behind enemy lines. He had dogfights, went underground in war-torn Berlin, and saw heavy service in the Pacific during the battle for Okinawa. -
At 4:45PM on Independence Day 1944, The Raymond Scott Orchestra took to the air for fifteen minutes of music on CBS’ WABC in New York.
Born Harry Warnow on September 10th, 1908 in Brooklyn to Ukrainian Jewish parents, his older brother Mark, also a musician, encouraged Harry’s career.
He graduated from the Juilliard School of Music in 1931 where he studied piano, theory, and composition. He began his professional career as a pianist for the CBS Radio house band under his birth name. Mark, older by eight years, conducted the orchestra. Harry adopted the pseudonym "Raymond Scott" to spare his brother charges of nepotism when the orchestra began performing the pianist's unique compositions.
In late 1936, Scott assembled a band from among his CBS colleagues. Although it was a six-piece group, he called it the Raymond Scott Quintette, joking with a reporter that calling at a sextet might take one’s mind off the music.
Scott believed in composing and playing by ear. He composed not on paper, but "on his band"—by humming phrases to his sidemen or by demonstrating riffs and rhythms on the keyboard, instructing players to interpret his cues.
Also a sound engineer, he recorded the band's rehearsals, using them as references to develop his compositions. Scott reworked, re-sequenced, and deleted passages, and added themes from other discs to construct finished pieces. While he controlled the band's repertoire and style, he rarely took piano solos, preferring to direct the band from the keyboard and leave solos and leads to his sidemen. He also had a penchant for adapting classical motifs into his work.
Independence Day 1944 was celebrated with remembrance, prayer, and War Bond drives.
Norman Rockwell’s July 1st Saturday Evening Post cover featured a wounded veteran holding up a $100 war bond. The July 3rd cover of LIFE Magazine featured a G.I with a leg wound being helped by a compatriot. There was a prominent sticker on top that said “buy war bonds.”
Meanwhile in Bedford, New Hampshire, an unexpected explosion at the John P. Bedricks powder works sent nearly seventy-miles of New England into a panic as windows as far away as Worchester, Massachusetts were destroyed. Despite this, there were no fatalities.
At 4PM, NBC celebrated the Treasury Department’s “Salute To the Navy” from Philadelphia’s Navy Yard. Speakers included Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthaur Jr., and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal.
In New York, Edward J. Nathan, Manhattan’s Borough President, addressed a rally of Jewish war veterans at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Riverside Drive, while the Knights of Columbus and sixty-seven affiliated councils, sponsored a parade and band concert in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. That evening, a Special Fifth War Bond Rally was held at Lewisohn Stadium in City College. -
Episodes manquant?
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On Tuesday July 4th, 1944 at 11:15AM, the homespun Vic and Sade took to the air over NBC’s WEAF in New York.
First airing on June 29th, 1932, Vic and Sade was created by Paul Rhymer. Known as “radio’s home folks,” the show was broadcast from The Merchandise Mart in Chicago. Rhymer wrote the script each morning before heading to watch the rehearsal and broadcast. On good days, one rewrite sufficed. On difficult days, the script would be ripped up again and again and poured over.
The result was a standalone twelve-minute sketch that, over time, told the life story of Mr. and Mrs Victor Gook and their family and friends at “the small house halfway up in the next block” in a rural town somewhere in Illinois. The town was populated by strange eccentrics with some of the most wonderful names ever heard in fiction.
Most of the characters were only spoken about and sound effects were purposely sparse, save for the ever-present telephone.
In radio circles, the show was regarded as one of the all-time best. Among its devoted fans were Jean Shepherd, Norman Corwin, Jim and Marion Jordan, Carlton E. Morse, Stan Freberg, Ray Bradbury, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. -
Tuesday, July 4th, 1944. It’s been twenty-nine days since the Allies first stormed the beaches of Normandy. They’ve continued to slowly push inland, but the battle for control of the Caen has raged onward. CBS is there with up-to-the-minute news.
On Saturday July 1st, A counterattack by German Panzer Corps failed to dislodge the British Second Army around Caen. When OB West Gerd von Rundstedt phoned Berlin to report the failure, Chief of Staff Wilhelm Keitel asked, “what shall we do?” Rundstedt replied, “Make peace you fools!” He was fired the next day.
Meanwhile the U.S. 133rd Infantry Regiment captured Cecina in Tuscany, Italy. They’d enter Siena on Monday the 3rd. At the same time Allies and Japanese forces began battling in New Guinea and The Battle of Imphal in India ended in Allied victory.
On the morning of the Fourth, Minsk, the last big German stronghold on Soviet soil, finally fell.
This kind of war created a need for fast news relays, so much so that for the first time, news was being recorded on the battlefront.
On Independence Day 1944, needing to push further inland from Normandy, the task fell to the 79th and 90th Divisions as well as the 82nd Airborne, all of whom had to assault uphill and around a large marsh in the low ground, while twelve Nazi divisions lay in wait, including several Panzer units.
The troops fought yard by yard, making slow but steady progress at a high cost. The 90th Division alone lost over 500 men that day.
This same day, General Omar Bradley had artillery units in the US First Army open fire on the German lines precisely at noon. Some units fired red, white, and blue smoke shells at the Germans. The message was clear: The Americans were in Western Europe and they wouldn’t be leaving until victory was achieved.
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The man you just heard was Norman Lewis Corwin. He was born on May 3rd, 1910 in Boston, Massachusetts. The third of four children, his mother Rose was a homemaker, and his father, Samuel, a printer.
Norman graduated from Winthrop High School, but unlike his brothers, he did not attend college. Instead, he got a job at the Greenfield Reporter as a Cub newsman at seventeen. Corwin was later hired by the Springfield Republican where he worked as an editor. He became known for his column "Radiosyncracies."
His first exposure to professional Radio broadcasting came with an opportunity to air an interview regarding one of the human interest stories he'd written. Station WBZA soon needed a newsreader and sought to have the position filled with someone from the local paper. Corwin got the job.
By 1929 Corwin fashioned his own broadcast over WBZA, a combination of piano interludes interwoven with Corwin's original poetry readings. He called the program Rhymes and Cadences.
In 1931, Corwin traveled to Europe with his older brother, witnessing the growing fascism, social and religious unrest, and political turmoil. It helped shape his broadcasting career.
In June 1935, he went to Cincinnati to work at WLW. He soon learned that any on-air reportage of collective bargaining efforts were grounds for immediate dismissal. Objecting, he was fired. Eventually he got the ACLU’s backing and got the policy changed.
Corwin came to New York, finding work as a publicist for 20th Century-Fox. He soon proposed a poetry and music program for WQXR. The program was called Poetic License, and it wasn’t long before both NBC and CBS took notice.
A few days shy of his twenty-eighth birthday in 1938, CBS hired Corwin as a director for One-Hundred-Twenty-Five-Dollars per-week. Within a few months he directed his first Columbia Workshop experimental drama, “The Red Badge of Courage,” airing July 9th, 1938.
On the night of Sunday October 30th, 1938, Corwin was rehearsing the pilot for a new program, Words Without Music. Downstairs, Orson Welles was broadcasting his infamous Mercury Theater “War of The Worlds.” -
Hey everybody James Scully here, host of Breaking Walls. If you've been listening to this show for years on this RSS feed, I want you to know that you can also subscribe to the show on Youtube — www.youtube.com/@thewallbreakersllc.
I'm asking people who listen here on the RSS feed to subscribe on Youtube because Youtube offers the easiest path to monetizing this show.
I'm going to be fully transparent right now: There have been times in the history of this podcast that via RSS feed, Breaking Walls has had as many as 27000 - 30000 monthly downloads, but even with that, it's very hard to monetize the show via traditional podcast channels. However, I've been able to clear the monetization hurdles on Youtube, so please subscribe there. If you happen to listen on a computer or on a phone, I would appreciate if you listened via Youtube.
I'm also going into Youtube and slowly uploading all shows from Breaking Walls' archive in individual podcast playlists on Youtube. This way, everything that for years now has fallen off the RSS feed here doesn't matter. You can get all those archived shows FREE OF CHARGE on Youtube. Your listening for free will enable me to earn money, and I'd appreciate that very much.
So once again — www.youtube.com/@thewallbreakersllc
Keep getting out there, keep breaking those walls, and I'll catch you on the flip side. -
Here we are, back at Bill Pogue’s. It’s after 11PM. What do we know? Well, there are less people drinking here than last night, most would rather stay in and listen for updates. On the air over CBS right now is Joan Brooks. Me? I’m just trying to have that nightcap I started yesterday.
There are still news bulletins coming out of Europe. It’s almost dawn there. The men will be continuing their missions with D-Day: Plus 1
So far, we know that at least four-thousand Allied soldiers have been killed in the initial attack, but the German forces on the Normandy peninsula have either been killed, captured or forced to withdraw to Caen.
I’m sure as we speak troops and equipment are being ferried across the Channel. I know the hope is that by the end of June we’ll have nearly a million men in western Europe as we advance north from Italy simultaneously. With the Russians pushing Germany west it’s only a matter of time, but the Germans won’t go down without a fight.
But, I know American resolve. We’ll be up for the task, no matter how long it takes. It’s why next month on Breaking Walls we’ll move just a few weeks into the future and focus on Independence Day, 1944.
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The reading material used in today’s episode was:
• Radio Speakers--A Biographical Dictionary — By Jim Cox
• On The Air — By John Dunning
• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg
As well as articles from
• Broadcasting Magazine
• CBSNews.com
• GlobalNews.ca
• LIFE Magazine
• Military-History.org
• The New York Times
• The New York Daily News
• Presidency.UCSB.edu
• RadioArchives.com
• Radio Daily
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On the interview front:
• André Baruch, Mel Blanc, Ken Carpenter, Norman Corwin, Alice Frost, Barbara Luddy, Bret Morrison, Ken Roberts, Kate Smith, and Olan Soule spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these full chats at Speakingofradio.com.
• Himan Brown, Staats Cotsworth, Jim Jordan, Mandel Kramer, and Jan Miner, spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org
• Joan Banks spoke to SPERDVAC. For more info, go to SPERDVAC.com
• Fran Carlon, John Daly, and Ben Grauer spoke for Westinghouse’s 50th anniversary.
• Ned Calmer, Doug Edwards, Lowell Thomas, Charles Osgood, and Bob Trout spoke to CBS for their 50th anniversary.
• HV Kaltenborn spoke to NBC for their 50th anniversary
• Charles Collingwood and Bob Trout spoke to the makers of Please Stand By
• Bob Trout also spoke to the Television Academy
• George Burns spoke with Barbara Walters
• Red Skelton spoke with Dini Petty
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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:
• Romanian Folk Dances #3 — By Béla Bartók, played by Avi Avital
• Wilderness Trail — By Walter Scharf for National Geographic
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A massive special thank you to Walden Hughes for supplying so many master quality recordings used in this D-Day episode. Listen to Walden’s shows on the Yesterday USA radio network. -
At 10:50PM on D-Day, The Red Skelton Show took to the air with a final abbreviated episode before Skelton left for World War II.
When his show debuted on October 7th, 1941 critics were skeptical. Skelton was a pantomimist. How could he succeed on radio? But he was soon getting laughs every eleven seconds and for three seasons more than twenty-five million people were tuning in as he pulled ratings in the 30s. His supporting cast of Lurene Tuttle, Ozzie, and Harriet Nelson were heavily featured.
But then Skelton got divorced and lost his marriage deferment. The army drafted him in 1944. MGM and radio sponsor Raleigh Cigarettes tried to help with no avail. The Draft Board also turned down his request to join the Special Services branch for entertainers. This was questioned by some critics, who noted that he had worked tirelessly to entertain servicemen.
Skelton’s last radio program was on D-Day, June 6th, 1944. The next day the thirty-year-old Skelton was formally inducted as a private. Without its star, the program was discontinued until he could come back from the war.
Skelton lost eighteen months of his career, eventually suffering a nervous breakdown in Italy, and having to be hospitalized for three months. He would be discharged in September of 1945. -
At 10PM, across all networks, the President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt, took to the air with a special prayer for the invading troops. Thirty-Five million Americans tuned in. It was the most-listened to broadcast of any kind which aired in 1944.
At 10:15 Bob Hope took to the air with a special D-Day Broadcast. For more information on this year of Bob’s life, tune into Breaking Walls episode 148.
This is FDR's D-Day Prayer below:
My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.
And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:
Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.
Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.
They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.
They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.
For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.
Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.
And for us at home - fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas - whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them - help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.
Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.
Give us strength, too - strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.
And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.
And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
Thy will be done, Almighty God.
Amen. -
D-Day, June 6th, 1944 was a Tuesday. Ordinarily on Tuesday evenings NBC had a comedy lineup that rivaled the greatest in history. A main part of it was the man you just heard, Jim Jordan, who starred on Fibber McGee and Molly.
The normal Fibber McGee and Molly show was canceled on D-Day. Instead, they presented a special musical program at 9:30PM featuring Billy Mills and the King’s Men, leaving room for late-breaking news bulletins.
Opposite, CBS presented the first in a new series, The Doctor Fights, starring Raymond Massey in a new portrait each week of a doctor on some far-flung battlefield.
The purpose of The Doctor Fights was two-fold: to honor the nation’s one-hundred eighty-thousand doctors, one-third of whom were in the theaters of battle, and to acquaint the public with penicillin. The sponsor, Schenley Laboratories, was one of twenty-two companies making penicillin, and often the stories described wondrous cures resulting from its use by doctors in distant and primitive outposts. Many listeners at that time had never heard of the drug. -
Opposite of The Burns and Allen Show at 9PM, NBC ran a special “Cross Country D-Day tour”, hosted by the just-heard Ben Grauer. It was a program from every part of the nation to show what everyone was thinking and doing on this historic and momentous day. The theme was the same: Work, Pray, Fight.
The stations included remotes from WTIC in Hartford, WSYR in Syracuse, WTAR in Norfolk, WSPD in Toledo, WLW in Cincinnati, WMC in Memphis, KTSP in St. Paul, and WKY in Oklahoma City. -
At 9PM on CBS, Burns and Allen took to the air with a special episode called “Kansas City’s Favorite Singer” with guest-star Dinah Shore. It featured Bea Benaderet and Mel Blanc.
Like George Burns and Grace Allen, Blanc and Benaderet spent decades working together, especially on Blanc’s own show after the war and later on The Flintstones. -
Norman Corwin was twenty-seven years old when he was hired by CBS in April of 1938. For three years he honed his craft on shows like Words Without Music, The Pursuit of Happiness, So This is Radio and Forecast.
In 1941 he was tasked with taking over The Columbia Workshop for twenty-six weeks. These plays are today known as “Twenty-Six By Corwin.” They ranged from whimsy, to romance, to high drama, to coming of age tales. CBS refused to offer the series up for sponsorship. Corwin’s programs weren’t about revenue, they were about advancing the medium itself.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Manilla on December 7th, 1941, Corwin penned a play in honor of the 150th anniversary of The Bill of Rights. It was at the behest of President Roosevelt.
The play was called “We Hold These Truths,” and broadcast on December 15th. Simultaneously heard on all four networks, sixty-million tuned in. It was at that time, the largest ratings share of any dramatic program ever.
By 1944 Corwin had free rein over his productions. The Workshop essentially became branded as Columbia Presents Corwin.
Corwin had previously adapted Carl Sandburg’s The People, Yes three times. At 8PM over CBS on D-Day, Corwin presented the first in An American Trilogy on Carl Sandburg featuring Charles Laughton. The following two weeks he’d present part two on Thomas Wolfe and part three on Walt Whitman.
Opposite, NBC broadcast a special version of the Ginny Simms show. -
At the conclusion of Ronald Colman’s reading of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, legendary commentator H. V. Kaltenborn took to the air with news and comments on the day’s invasion.
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John Nesbitt was born in Victoria, British Columbia on August 23rd, 1910. The grandson of actor Edwin Booth, the family moved to Alameda, California. Nesbitt was active in stock theater in Vancouver and Spokane and began working for NBC in San Francisco in 1933. By 1935, he was an announcer at KFRC in San Francisco.
Nesbitt produced a series called Headlines of the Past which spun off into his signature program, The Passing Parade, in 1937. The inspiration came from a trunk inherited from his father that contained news clippings of odd stories from around the world. He utilized a research staff to verify the details, but wrote the final scripts himself, often within an hour of airtime.
This led to a series of one-reel shorts produced by MGM.
On the evening of June 6th, 1944, the just-heard Ken Carpenter was announcer for a Passing Parade broadcast on CBS at 7:15PM in which Nesbitt attempted to capture, in real time, the historic significance of D-Day by imagining its story being retold to schoolchildren in the year 2044.
At 7:30PM over NBC, Ronald Colman read a special “Poem and Prayer for an Invading Army” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. -
It’s nearly 6:45PM and I’m at an automat getting some dinner. People around here are feeling a little looser as, by all accounts, the Normandy landings had been a success.
They’ve got NBC on the air. Just ending is a “Serenade to America'' with Winifred Hite, Nora Sterling, Milton Katims and his Orchestra. Legendary newscaster Lowell Thomas is about to go on over WEAF with a summary and commentary on the day’s events.
Thomas has been on radio since the dawn of the network era. He took over as the host of NBC’s Sunday Literary Digest program in 1930. By October of 1930, he was including more news stories. He moved to CBS, but was back on NBC two years later. -
At 3PM The British King George VI issued a D-Day speech. The Transcription is below.
Four years ago, our Nation and Empire stood alone against an overwhelming enemy, with our backs to the wall. Tested as never before in our history, in God's providence we survived that test; the spirit of the people, resolute, dedicated, burned like a bright flame, lit surely from those unseen fires which nothing can quench.
Now once more a supreme test has to be faced. This time, the challenge is not to fight to survive, but to fight to win the final victory for the good cause. Once again what is demanded from us all is something more than courage and endurance; we need a revival of spirit, a new unconquerable resolve. After nearly five years of toil and suffering, we must renew that crusading impulse on which we entered the war and met its darkest hour. We and our Allies are sure that our fight is against evil and for a world in which goodness and honor may be the foundation of the life of men in every land.
That we may be worthily matched with this new summons of destiny, I desire solemnly to call my people to prayer and dedication. We are not unmindful of our own shortcomings, past and present. We shall ask not that God may do our will, but that we may be enabled to do the will of God: and we dare to believe that God has used our Nation and Empire as an instrument for fulfilling his high purpose.
I hope that throughout the present crisis of the liberation of Europe there may be offered up earnest, continuous and widespread prayer. We who remain in this land can most effectively enter into the sufferings of subjugated Europe by prayer, whereby we can fortify the determination of our sailors, soldiers and airmen who go forth to set the captives free.
The Queen joins with me in sending you this message. She well understands the anxieties and cares of our womenfolk at this time and she knows that many of them will find, as she does herself, fresh strength and comfort in such waiting upon God. She feels that many women will be glad in this way to keep vigil with their menfolk as they man the ships, storm the beaches and fill the skies.
At this historic moment surely not one of us is too busy, too young or too old to play a part in a nationwide, perchance a worldwide, vigil of prayer as the great crusade sets forth. If from every place of worship, from home and factory, from men and women of all ages and many races and occupations, our intercessions rise, then, please God, both now and in a future not remote, the predictions of an ancient Psalm may be fulfilled: "The Lord will give strength unto his people: the Lord will give his people the blessing of peace."
By this time, Allied reinforcements from Britain had already arrived in Normandy. Ground troops linked up with the paratroopers further inland and pressed on toward Caen. However, the allies wouldn’t capture the city for more than a month.
Once King George VI’s speech was over, CBS switched back to Alan Jackson with a news update.
At 4:40PM the just-heard John Daly, Bill Shirer, and Quincy Howe took to CBS’ airwaves with more news updates. -
Perry Mason debuted over CBS airwaves on October 18th, 1943. On D-Day it was airing at 2:45PM from New York.
Mason was a crime-busting lawyer, famous in fiction for unmasking killers in court. Though it came in the guise of crime drama, the show was full-bore soap opera. At points, Jan Miner played Della Street, Mason’s secretary. Mandel Kramer played Police Lieutenant Tragg. -
That was the voice of Joan Banks Lovejoy who played the scheming Arline Harrison Manning on Portia Faces Life. During World War II she was all over New York radio.
On Portia Faces Life, Lucille Wall starred as Portia Blake, a young woman lawyer who battled corruption in the small town of Parkerstown. The show debuted with a crisis on October 7th, 1940 and throughout its entire nearly eleven-year run, the crises never ended.
The show moved to CBS in April of 1944 and on D-Day it was airing weekdays at 2PM. The run on CBS would be relatively brief, as on October 3rd, 1944 Portia Faces Life would move back to NBC.
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That was the voice of Fran Carlon, who at times starred as Joyce Jordan, MD. Jordan started as a girl intern at Heights Hospital, slowly progressing to a doctor, facing the difficulty of being an intelligent woman in a man’s world.
Ken Roberts was the announcer. He’d been a radio staple since the mid-1920s, beginning first at WMCA in New York before becoming a CBS staff announcer. On D-Day, Ken was thirty-five years old. Here’s Ken talking with Chuck Schaden about those early days of Network radio. Himan Brown was often the director. -
12:45PM brought a forty-minute CBS news update featuring Edward R. Murrow from London, Douglas Edwards recapping CBS coverage, and a Quincy Howe analysis.
Following this broadcast John Daly immediately signed on. -
At 12:15PM Big Sister took to the air over CBS starring the just-heard Alice Frost as Ruth Evans.
Ruth centered her life around her sister Sue and their crippled brother Neddie. When Sue married reporter Jerry Miller, Ruth was able to give her full attention to the care of little Ned. Then, unexpectedly, Ruth fell in love with Neddie’s new doctor, John Wayne, played first by Martin Gabel and later by Staats Cotsworth. - Montre plus
